The remote management of electronic devices such as, for example, mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA's), pagers, and personal computers may involve the updating of firmware and/or application software, or the configuration of device parameters. The updating of firmware or software components, and the remote provisioning of operating parameters may be a complex activity using communications protocols that are flexible in their capabilities, but that may sometimes be inefficient in terms of the amount of information exchanged for the changes conveyed.
For example, the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Device Management (DM) protocol used to manage mobile devices employs extensible markup language (XML)-based messages for session setup, for sending management commands, for receiving status, for exchanging results, etc. Each XML message may contain a number of information items including, for example, a header, a body, security credentials, device information, etc., many of which are often redundant or useless in any given exchange. In some instances, a device management server may be required to send 1 K bytes or more in order to set the value of one byte of data in a device management object in the mobile device. Use of such a “heavy-weight” protocol for simple tasks may be costly to a subscriber both in the time needed to perform the device management operations, and in the air time charges incurred.
In many instances, a mobile electronic device may be roaming outside of its home service area, and any device management activities conducted may cause the subscriber to incur roaming charges. A subscriber is not likely to be happy to receive a hefty bill for a 1 MB firmware update conducted while the user is roaming. At the present time, it is normally not possible to determine whether a mobile device is roaming, and most mobile devices when engaging in device management activities do not inform the device management server when they are roaming. Thus, a device management server may unknowingly initiate device management activities when the mobile device is roaming, or select an inappropriate device management protocol, causing subscribers to incur air time charges at higher roaming rates for device management activities that could just as easily be performed at a later time, when the mobile device is within its home service area, or with a more efficient protocol.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.